‘We are ready to listen’: Wichita mayor announces new civil rights advisory council

Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple said he is forming a new advisory council on civil rights after a weekend of peaceful protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minnesota.

“I want to thank you for keeping the protests this weekend both peaceful and productive,” Whipple said in a video posted to Twitter. “At City Hall, we are ready to listen and to work with the community towards a better Wichita. And that’s why tomorrow I plan to appoint an advisory council to the mayor that is focused on inclusion, diversity and civil rights so that we can have more people at the table and more voices as we move our city forward.”

Protests have taken place across the country — some peaceful, some violent — in the wake of Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

Floyd, a black man, died on Memorial Day as Officer Derek Chauvin, a white man, pinned him to the street with a knee to the neck. Chauvin has been fired and charged with third-degree murder. Three other officers who did not intervene have been fired but have not been charged.

Floyd’s last words were “I can’t breathe” as his death was captured on video by bystanders who pleaded for his life.

State Rep. Gail Finney, who has advocated for civil rights and against police excesses in the Legislature, said she was heartened when Whipple mentioned creating an advisory council while he attended a protest march Saturday.

“That was a surprise to me and I was glad to hear it, because I definitely think we need a commission or organization like that to have some type of oversight and suggestions that we can work to improve community relations not only with police officers and city council and county commission,” Finney said. “I think it’s going to take a collective conversation so that we can get some kind of healing going on because we want to prevent what happened in Minneapolis from happening here.”

Whipple said he plans to announce who will be on the council on Tuesday, the day the Wichita City Council meets.

He said he has “a fairly lengthy list” of community leaders and people who were nominated by community leaders. He said the list includes pastors, community activists and “voices that traditionally have not been at the table.”

The council will look at “what are we doing well, what aren’t we doing well and what can we improve,” he said, and “look at action steps that can turn into policy.”

“My goal is to work towards progress and to let people know we’re listening,” Whipple said. “We want to work together to make Wichita the best it can be today and in the future.”

City Council member Brandon Johnson said now is the time for change, and the city is open to hearing any ideas for local policies to improve community-police relations.

But he said it will take federal and state law changes on racial profiling, hate crimes, justified homicides and use of force before the problem of police brutality is eradicated.

“The energy right now feels different,” Johnson said. “There seems to be more people willing to speak out about injustice. But until I see real progress that is really voted on, that really becomes law, I’m not optimistic because my whole life my parents and grandparents have been talking to me about the same issues that I’m fighting now at 34.

“Locally, we can look at policies with our police department, which we have and we are. But when you have instances like what we have with George Floyd, if we wanted to charge that as a hate crime, we couldn’t because the Legislature won’t pass a bill. So they really limit it.”

Johnson said state and federal lawmakers must take action.

“The problem is that many of the folks in elected office think that accountability is anti-law-enforcement, and it’s not,” he said. “But they continue to push it as anti-law-enforcement. And the truth is we support law enforcement, we just want accountability because without accountability you see what we’ve seen throughout the nation.”

Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau applauded Whipple’s move as a step toward trying to overcome the city’s history of segregation and economic disparity between white and black communities.

Tens of millions of tax dollars have been spent on creating downtown amenities, but there’s been little investment in the historically black neighborhoods northeast of downtown, Faust-Goudeau said.

“You know, we’ve built up downtown quite a bit and we’ve got Old Town,” Faust-Goudeau said. “But to be quite honest, when I’m talking to African-Americans, they don’t feel comfortable in Old Town.”

The bar and restaurant district can be entertaining, but only if you have the money to enjoy it, she said.

“Most black people are working those essential jobs,” such as aviation manufacturing, services and education, Faust-Goudeau said. “They’re struggling anyway and then if they go somewhere and they’re made to feel uncomfortable, then it leads to what we see.

“Even though we have all this stuff in Wichita and there’s a lot to do, if you cannot afford it, you don’t get to do anything. So when you’re young and you’re poor and you’re black and they keep creating things to keep you back, that’s what creates tension.”

Faust-Goudeau said the only way she sees to solve the problem is to increase interaction between groups.

“I trust that Mayor Whipple will have a diverse group on that panel,” She said. “We’ve got to include the entire community of Wichita.”

This story was originally published June 1, 2020 at 8:43 PM.